“There are other things you must see,” she said, a growl in her voice. She heaved herself up and began walking into the desert.
***
I had no idea where we were going, but the scenery changed from desert to mountain within one step and the next. Ponderosa pines soared around us, blotting out the sky. The wind turned even colder, snow drifts piling up under the trees. A ribbon of black road stretched beside us, wet from melted snow and ice. The sign I could read a little way off read Whiteriver, 10 mi.
A car burst toward us, going far too fast for the slim, winding road. The car slid sideways on ice, the driver frantically turning the steering wheel. The vehicle spun until it finally thumped into a snowy bank and stopped.
I hurried forward. I had no idea whether these people could see me, but I felt a burning need to help them.
A man, Native American, got himself out of the driver’s side of the car. He was yelling, but his words were slurred. A woman, also Native American, emerged from the passenger side and hurriedly stumbled toward him through the ice and snow.
The man reached into the backseat of the car and pulled out a bundle much the same as the one my father had held. This one too began to shriek and cry. I halted.
“No!” the woman pleaded. “You can’t!”
The man snarled at her then ran a few steps into the woods, holding the baby between his two hands as though it might explode.
“You can’t do this. She’ll die!” The woman ran after him, sliding on the ice, catching up to his lumbering stride. “Give her to me. I’ll take care of her.”
“You don’t want her. Her mother was a witch. This baby will grow up and kill you.”
I went cold, and not because of the weather. Though the man and woman spoke a language I didn’t know, I somehow understood every word. I knew who they were, and the name of the baby the man was trying to abandon.
He tossed the bundle down under a tree. The child’s wails grew, terror ringing in the still air.
The woman rapidly stooped down and came up with the baby in her arms. She was crying, but she tried to sound comforting as she soothed the child. “Hush now, Gabrielle. He didn’t mean it. It’s all right.”
“Anna,” the man said. “Put her down, or I’ll kill you.”
The woman, Anna Massey, looked up at her husband with the same determination in her eyes my father had held in his. “Leave her alone. I will take care of her.”
“She’s another woman’s child,” her husband snapped. “Do you understand that? A witch seduced me, an evil woman—she made me screw her. Again and again, until she got pregnant.”
“That’s not the baby’s fault,” Anna said stubbornly, holding the child close. “We’ve tried for so long …” She trailed off, tears in her voice. “A demon didn’t leave this child. God did.”
Massey stood looking at her, his hands on his hips. He was afraid, drunk, and angry at himself and at my goddess mother for luring him from his wife. I felt pity for him, but only so much—Gabrielle’s father had been an alcoholic and also a rather stupid man, petty and cruel out of ignorance.
Finally, Massey heaved a sigh. “Get back in the car, Anna. I wasn’t really going to leave her.”
Yes, he had been. I knew this, and I saw that his wife knew it too. Anna clutched the child defensively, but obeyed, climbed back to the car, and got inside.
If Anna Massey had possessed the personality of my grandmother, she’d have demanded the keys from her husband and not let him drive in his state of inebriation.
But I also knew that they didn’t die on this day of drunken driving. That would come later, after Gabrielle had suffered years of abuse from this man, and he’d tried to flee her and her monstrous power.
Massey started the car, slowly righted it, and drove away toward Whiteriver at a more sedate pace.
I let out my breath. “All right, why am I seeing this?”
I was speaking to empty air. My grandmother was gone, and I was alone under the snowy trees.
My breath fogged. “Can I at least be someplace warm?” I asked the landscape around me. “How about my hotel with a roaring fire, hot coffee, and Mick to curl up around?”
Nothing. I remained on the road in Mick’s long T-shirt, in the middle of the White Mountains with no transportation. I wasn’t as cold as I should have been, because my physical body was back in my hotel, on the bathroom floor.
Heaving a sigh, I began to walk, heading in the opposite direction from Whiteriver. I would reach another mountain town soon where maybe I’d be able to hitch a ride, if anyone could see me, or would pick up a woman wearing only a long T-shirt. Did I really want a ride with those who would?